Slasher – Season 2, Episode 6: “Drone”

* For a recap & review of the previous episode, “Out of the Frying Pan” – click here
* For a recap & review of the next episode, “Dawn of the Dead” – click hereWe see Mark (Paulino Nunes) having sex in the kitchen with Stephanie, taking pictures. It’s in a restaurant, not far from the staff just outside. Sneaky, sneaky. In through the door comes a scruffy looking dude (Dean McDermott). He’s pissed at Mark, whose client killed his son in a drunk driving incident; he obviously got the guy off for the death. The lawyer claims he was just doing a job, but this is not the end. Moments later, the man blows Stephanie’s brains out in front of everybody. He points the gun at Mark, shooting him twice, before turning the gun on himself.
Jesus. What a bloody opener. And now we see where our guy got his scars.Back to the retreat, where Peter (Lovell Adams-Grey) and Keira (Madison Cheeatow) have found the corpse of Talvinder (Melinda Shankar) with a burned up Noah (Jim Watson) underneath. Turns out, the poor guy’s still alive. They get him inside, trying to help with his burn wounds. A brutal situation. Mark’s having troubles due to his flashbacks to that day he was shot. Worse, Noah needs a hospital, he can barely breath without a tube getting shoved down his throat.
Outside a plane flies over; they don’t get its attention, though they start making an SOS signal out of branches and logs in hopes it’ll circle back, and that they’ll be ready. Mark also wants to build a couple fires to make smoke signals, so Peter and Dawn (Paula Brancati) head further into the woods. Inside, Wren (Sebastian Pigott) reveals a bit of an inner dark side, he doesn’t care that there’s a man burned up, dying in front of them, whereas Judith (Leslie Hope) hates to see Noah in pain; she doesn’t care what the young man did before. “Karma disagrees with you,” says Wren.
Out in the woods, Dawn steps right into a bear trap. They can’t open it. Peter offers to head back. Although now this leaves her all alone. She has a gun, but that’ll only do so good. She nearly shoots Mark when he turns up, then Peter gets back, too. They manage to get her out. But her leg’s gonna be fucked up for a little while. She and Mark get closer now, bonding during a terrifying experience, isolated out there.
Keira straight out asks Peter if they killed that girl five years ago. From his burned up state, Noah tells Peter: “Blame me.” He admits to his part in what happened, telling Keira it was largely his fault. But, is it true? Isn’t there more? Oh, yes. You know there’s always more.Downstairs Mark comes to confront everybody. He believes that one of them is the killer, someone in that cabin. He talks about being an attorney before, paid to be a nasty shark. He wants to root out the killer by questioning everybody. However, they’re not happy with that. Wren calls him a “fascist.” Nobody’s gonna do that, certainly not Renée (Joane Vannicola). Yet he’s pretty keen on it. He offers for him to represent We Live As One and Dawn to represent the group of friends during this little mock trial.
Mark stats with Keira. He figures out eventually she had a patient die on her watch once when she was an ER nurse. She’d been working a long shift, she messed up, and that was that. Next is Wren. He’s pretty combative and has nothing to say. Judith isn’t totally forthcoming, Mark asks her about her strong prescription drugs and she passes it off. He pushes her a bit hard, getting personal, to the point Dawn isn’t on board. Judith yells at him, accusing him of “gaslighting” her; and she’s right. Then comes Renée. She would’ve had no reason to kill Antoine, however, Mark won’t let her forget that she killed Benny, torturing him to death.
Mark questions Dawn about why they came up there. She’s honest, explaining they were coming up to find the remains, to move them before the resort was built. She doesn’t show any remorse. Claims it was “an accident” and goes on about how Talvinder wasn’t “innocent.” Whatever relationship they’d started building together has fallen apart, as Mark rages at her. When he goes to interrogate Peter, they’ve all had enough of him stirring the place into madness. Everybody’s slowly starting to crumble, turning against one another.
This leads to the lawyer pulling out that gun; an interesting parallel to the opening scene. Simultaneously, Noah chokes to death, succumbing to his brutal wounds.Renée puts aside the anger, asking Mark to go with her someplace. She tells him, vaguely, somebody said something they “shouldn‘t have known … about the past.” They head out to a spot where there’s a small cabin. She heads in while he stays out, guarding with the gun. This is when we flash back two years ago, Mark first coming to We Live As One. He meets Antoine (Christopher Jacot), Renée, Judith, as they welcome him with open arms. They’re all bright eyed, bushy tailed, ready to live an alternative lifestyle in the midst of nature.
Quite different from how it is now. Especially with a chainsaw revving in the distance.
Renée finds a box of things from 2012 marked Camp Motega. She looks through it and comes across the files of the group of friends, from Andi (Rebecca Liddiard) to Talvinder to Dawn and the rest. And then we see Wren. I knew there was something not right about him, a secret.
Outside the killer, covered in blood, arrives on snowmobile. He runs Mark down hard. Then he puts a couple bullets into Renée as she runs away. She doesn’t make it very far. The killer takes the file from her, then we hear the sounds of him running her over, the wet sounds of the blood, her last scream.THIS SERIES IS BRUTAL! In the right ways. Season 2 has upped the game, and that’s saying something, too. Season 1 had some doozies. But this is wild. Dig it.
“Dawn of the Dead” is next. Oh, what will happen next?

An Update from Father Gore

Seek & Ye Shall Find

Father Gore is first and foremost a passionate lover of film— especially horror. He's also a Master's student at Memorial University of Newfoundland with a concentration in postmodern critical theory, currently writing a thesis which will be his debut novel of literary fiction, titled Silence. He also used to write for Film Inquiry frequently during 2016-17 and is currently contributing to Scriptophobic in a column called Serial Killer Celluloid focusing on film adaptations about real life murderers. As of September 2018, Father Gore is an official member of the Online Film Critics Society.